


deep water

by rynleaf



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, Multi, Soulmates, plus various members of the origins party
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 21:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18948580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rynleaf/pseuds/rynleaf
Summary: “There is a potion,” Surana says. Alistair makes a choked sound. “Circles, you know.”“They have a thing aboutfornication,” Morrigan adds helpfully, “nevermind world-changing, earth shattering soulmate magic. Stuff of nightmares. Makes mages dangerously independent.”“Hey,” Surana snaps. Morrigan cackles.





	deep water

**Author's Note:**

> this is self-indulgent and unapologetic nonsense and I regret nothing.
> 
> thank you Mari for the beta help <3

As he grows up, they tell him there are no bonds in the world for the likes of him. Zevran doesn't think much of it—these days his mind is occupied by more immediate dangers, being seven and scrawny and the weakest of the children under the care of House Arainai.  There is no time to dwell on the possibility of soulmates, not then.

The others are violent. He is smarter. He gets to live.

(Later he will wonder if it was worth it, to coat his arms in the blood of his peers—later, when he cradles Rinna’s cooling body in his arms and Taliesen walks out of the room, expression cast in stone.)

He is fourteen when the dream comes.

It is grey and black and white like all of his dreams before. The grassy slope in front of him disappears into mist where the Fade swallows the edges and trees cast long shadows into the nothing, darker, somehow, than real-world black. That’s where he sees it: a spot of colour, impossible, half-hidden in the dark.

Zevran moves and his heart beats faster. The figure peels out of the fog and sharpens into the form of a girl in a blue robe. She huddles between the roots, sections of her long braid caught in the branches and thorns, the rest pooling by her feet. She hides her face in her knees. Her shoulders are shaking.

“Hey,” Zevran says. The girl curls up even smaller. “Hey,” Zevran repeats, quickly losing patience—in his world there is no place for fear unless it’s the fear of his mark, and this girl—

“Go away,” the girl says, “I don’t want to play anymore.”

“What?”

She looks up then, tear streaked face brown and plain, and there is a bruise on her cheek. Her lips are bloody. Zevran crouches down. The girl frowns.

“You’re not Envy,” she says.

“Umm… no?”

“The other one is the same as you,” she says, tilting her head to the side, “but dirtier. He sleeps in the kennel with the dogs, you know?”

“The other one?” Zevran asks. The girl nods.

“I’m not allowed to talk to him,” she says. “Not anymore. The creche mother says they will take care of it tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Zevran says, head spinning. The girl’s accent is weird. Her eyes are unbonded-grey—he knows this, knows this because he is _here_ and the girl’s robes are blue.

“What’s your name?” the girl asks.

The dream dissolves before he can answer.

Zevran opens his eyes to the cramped darkness of his cot and sighs.

It matters not. There are no bonds in the world for the likes of him, even if his heart of hearts leaps at the memory of a robe so blue—he is a knife and nothing more, and his life doesn’t belong to him. He has learned to live with it. It matters not, not any more.

The girl doesn’t come again. Neither does anybody else.

Life goes on.

 

Rinna talks about her dream-bond sometimes. They aren’t allowed, not really, but neither are they allowed to have this: to curl up on a bed too small for the three of them, warm and boneless in post-coital bliss. Rinna’s voice is sleep-slow as she tells them about a boy with bright red hair who promises to free her from the Crows, one day. They all know it is impossible. Zevran envies her anyway.

“We will be the greatest friends,” she says, “you will come with me and we will run to Rivain and start our own House where nobody needs to starve or be bought with coin. It will be _glorious_.”

Taliesen laughs and says he has no need for escape, or a bond; has never had one and never will.

“Maybe he’s dead,” he says. “All the better for me, huh?”

Rinna huffs and bites his shoulder. Zevran rolls away and looks up at the ceiling, the sagging beams and fading green of the tiles more mildew than paint. He wonders if that’s what it is: that whoever put the bruise on the little girl’s face came back to finish the job, if she’s dead and has been for years. The thought leaves a strange taste in his mouth.

But then Taliesen turns to lick the tip of his ear and Zevran succumbs to the feverish rush of pleasure, the brightness of the afternoon and Rinna’s laugh. He is in love and life feels full of possibility. Zevran considers forever as much as any young Crow can: to be cradled between eager arms today, tomorrow, for as many days after as they can scrape away from this jealous world.

They are young, and foolish, and the world is indeed cruel.

 

\---

 

“And you’re _sure_ this will work,” the mercenary says. She sounds skeptical. Zevran smiles an easy smile and twirls one of his daggers in the air, watching as the woman picks at her skirt with a look of faint disgust on her face. The seams of the dainty blouse seem to groan at the stretch of her shoulders. It matters not. The stage is set.

“It will work,” Zevran says. “We talked about this. It is only a party of five. How many of _us_ is there, darling one?”

The woman scowls at him. “I can count, you know. There’s really no need to be an asshole.”

“Right then,” Zevran smiles. “Ready?”

“I _guess._ Andraste help us.”

It doesn’t take ten minutes until she comes running back on the path, expression long-suffering as she pretends to scream in distress at the company spread out in front of her. His mark’s party of five comes stumbling onto the clearing. No time to watch, to assess: the mercenary pulls her knife, the warrior twitches back with a shout as the blade finds a gap in his armour, the elf woman unhooks her staff and then—carnage. It’s a language he speaks intimately.

His mercenaries all die, of course. All he feels is relief when the scantily clad mage woman finally gets close enough to hit him in the side of the head with her staff: ice spiderwebs from the contact and he falls as darkness envelops him at last, at last. He stretches in that blessed quiet, ready, and then—

“Hey. Wake up.”

The world is cruel, and he is _not_ dead.

Zevran opens his eyes, takes a deep breath, then exhales fast as if somebody punched him in the gut.

It’s the girl. The girl in blue robes. Zevran laughs, hysterical and somewhat helpless, and the girl’s eyes flood with colour: brown, brown, brown, rye bread and honey-gold, just like the dream. His dream. Behind her, the warrior staggers back and clutches his face.

“No fucking way,” the mage-barbarian says. The others—is that a _Chantry sister?_ A qunari? What kind of sick joke is this?

 _Not for the likes of you,_ Master Arainai says in his memory, expression absent. The girl—woman—looks at him, one eye honey-brown, the other almost golden. The warrior turns toward them. A single tear spills down Zevran’s left cheek as his eyes itch and fill.

“No fucking _way,”_ the mage-barbarian repeats.

But here it is anyway: life is cruel, he is not dead, and his bond is here, here, here.

 

Leliana finds it all terribly romantic. _Bards._ Sten (the qunari) listens with stoic indifference as she recounts stories of other famous triads—if Zevran has to hear about Alvinna the Fair one more time he will consider murder. Once the dizziness passes, that is.

Enchanter Surana, Andraste help him, gives him startled looks from the corners of her eyes. Alistair stomps on behind them

Morrigan thinks it’s hilarious.

“Listen,” Surana says quietly, “this doesn’t need to… _mean_ anything. I mean…,” she swallows and clutches her staff tighter, “it is complicated. With. Yeah.” She glances over her shoulder at Alistair.

“I don’t even…like men. _That way,”_ Alistair mutters, sounding queasy. Oh good. A Fereldan prude. Zevran swallows the urge to throw back an obscene remark—not the time, he thinks, even if it would be fun. The warrior has delectable shoulders and blushes so well. It would be _easy._

And yet.

“I mean,” Surana continues, “you did try to kill us. Before.”

“I did,” Zevran agrees. She nods. They walk some more in silence. “I thought you were dead,” he adds.

“What?”

“The dreams?”

“Oh.”

A shadow passes over her face, half hidden by the choppy ends of her hair. It doesn’t even reach her shoulders anymore, instead it sticks up in untidy tufts around her ears. It gives her even more of a haunted look than her features already call for. Her nose grew to be large and crooked. Zevran decides he likes it.

“There is a potion,” she says then. Alistair makes a choked noise. “Circles, you know.”

“They have a _thing_ about fornication,” Morrigan adds helpfully, “nevermind world-changing, earth shattering soulmate magic. Stuff of nightmares. Makes mages dangerously _independent.”_

“Hey,” Surana snaps. Morrigan cackles.

“‘Tis true, is it not? Poor baby bird. Whatever will you do now, with no templars to tell you what to do?”

“I—”

“Nevermind,” Morrigan says and brushes past them with her nose in the air, “You probably think I should be locked up too, to be taught table manners. Tch.”

“That’s not what I—”

Surana sighs. Zevran lifts an eyebrow and asks: “This happens a lot, then?”

Alistair looks pained.

“You have no idea.”

 

Things settle into a routine, after. Alistair stops watching him like a hawk once Zevran fails to poison or shank them all in their sleep. Leliana nags him for stories. Morrigan argues with Surana—it’s like watching somebody kick a puppy, Zevran thinks, as he watches her try and fail to keep the peace. Morrigan makes her nervous. It is almost charming.

Then they make it to Redcliffe and things go sideways, fast.

The dead burn. It is somehow not the most horrifying thing waiting for them between those cursed castle walls. (Alistair turns green as Surana splits her palm on the edge of a knife and Isolde lifts into the air, limbs spread in angles all wrong, dead.)

“It’s better that I did it,” she whispers to Zevran later. She is shaking. He reaches around her shoulders to pull her closer, but she flinches away.

“Sorry, I—”

“No harm done,” Zevran says, and his heart aches. She refuses to let him bandage her hand. The haunted look never quite disappears from her eyes.

The wound heals, but scars. Alistair spits cruel words of grief. Surana, face blank, only says: whatever it takes.

_(It’s better I do it, than corrupt anybody else.)_

Zevran understands necessity. He was made wrong decades ago, the first time a Crow master put a knife between his spidery child-fingers and pointed him toward another man. Surana’s quest is much more dignified than mere survival. _Whatever it takes_ is a pretty good start.

Alistair stammers an apology. Morrigan slaps dishes and packets around and comes out with a foul smelling poultice, covers the wounds with the thick paste and says nothing.

Iraine lets her.

It’s strange, Zevran thinks, watching Alistair strip his gambeson and his shirt and wade into the stream without flinching at the cold, how they care for each other despite everything. He accepts a bowl of soup from Leliana. Alistair blushes when he turns around and finds Zevran watching.

Life goes on.

 

Zevran thinks he’s done with the ‘inevitable’ bullshit, but.

 

Alistair kisses him over smoking darkspawn corpses deep in the bowels of the Deep Roads for the first time. Branka’s carcass hasn’t yet finished bleeding. It is—something.

“You could have chosen a better locale,” Zevran pants into his mouth and Alistair makes a strangled sound. His eyes are large and mismatched and blurry with want.

“We almost _died,”_ he blurts. The stench of dead flesh makes their noses numb. It’s perfect.

“Get a fucking room,” Oghren grunts. Zevran glances at Iraine. Alistair buries his face into his hands.

“Awkward,” Morrigan says, but there’s no true venom in it.

Iraine is there for the rest: hands on shoulders and soothing words as Zevran stretches out over Alistair, taking and breathing and _living._

“I love you,” he whispers into the warm and sweaty darkness. In that moment he means all of it; Rinna’s smile and Taliesen’s easy hands, the dream-girl’s blue robes, Iraine’s mouth by his ear and Alistair’s strong arms.

It is a cruel thing, in truth. His heart is full and still, fear whispers: _how long, this time?_

Fortunate, then, that he has learned to wake from nightmares in quiet a long time ago.

 

\---

 

“Oh, are you fucking kidding me,” Morrigan says, “how many of your ex-lovers will show up to murder us in the near future, you think?”

Taliesen tilts his head to the side. Zevran swallows the urge to laugh.

“Come home with me,” Taliesen says. Iraine glances at him—he looks back and sees nothing but trust, the quiet depth of her love. She nods. Zevran smiles.

They hold him after, once Taliesen’s body finishes cooling and they stagger back to Arl Eamon’s palace to get outrageously drunk. Zevran cries into Alistair’s shoulder. Iraine tucks herself against his back and closes her eyes.

“I have found something,” she says later, once the bottles are empty and she makes them drink a mug of water each. She leans back against the headboard and buries her fingers into Zevran’s hair.

“Do you know why only Wardens can kill archdemons?”

 

Zevran thinks he’s done with the ‘inevitable’ bullshit, _but_.

 

They end it dizzy and wrung out, standing high up on that Denerim rooftop. The dragon’s corpse is spread out around them like a small mountain. Iraine and Alistair lean against him, hands still tangled together, the buzz of necrotic energy traversing their skin with ease. Iraine’s hands are caked in blood and dragon entrails.

“So that’s why the Circle doesn’t like soulmate-magic, huh?” Zevran says. Iraine snorts. Tendrils of arcane residue trail around them like colourful ribbons and Zevran wonders if this is how she sees the world all the time: a blur between the Fade and the truth, the colour of magic trailing after everything living and dead. He tugs the two of them closer. Alistair’s sword clatters to the stone and he wraps two armour-clad arms around them the best he can.

“You know,” he says, “we almost _died._ ”

“He wants to make out again,” Iraine says, and Zevran laughs, light and warm and free and holding tight, tight.

  


(There will be a monument here, in about a decade: three stone figures holding hands, moss and lichen growing in the crevices for colour. Alistair will pretend to hate it, but will spend snatched minutes and hours as King sitting under its shadow. Zevran will visit, sometimes. Iraine will never see it.

All will be well.)


End file.
